“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not be in want” (Ps. 23:1).
The image of the shepherd is tightly bound up with the story of Israel. The family of Abraham were shepherds, after all, bringing their flocks with them into Egypt: a vocation that the Egyptians looked down on but which was still useful enough to bring the People prosperity and influence. Adam and Eve’s son Abel was a shepherd, and the story of his murder by his brother Cain, a tiller of fields, may reflect the traditional antipathy between herdsmen and farmers. Jacob and his father-in-law Laban certainly argued over who owned the sheep; and Moses, after leaving Egypt, was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro when he heard the call of God. And of course David was a shepherd before he was a king. His facility with the five smooth stones that felled Goliath spurred him along the road to leadership, and eventually brought us to the words of our psalm this morning.
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not be in want” (Ps. 23:1). David the shepherd looked in turn to God the shepherd, the one who gathered the flock. “Hear, O Shepherd of Israel, leading Joseph like a flock” (Ps. 80:1), another affirmation, from the psalmist, of who exactly guided and guarded the People. “We are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand” (Ps. 95:7), it says in Psalm 95, reminding us of the relationship between the shepherd and the flock. God is trustworthy to supply all that we need.
Today we consecrate holy oil for healing, and oil of chrism for baptism. It’s the turn of the liturgical year, and a time for renewing the Church’s baptizing and healing ministry. It’s time to turn a new leaf, and remind ourselves that pastoral ministry itself revolves around the proclamation of the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection, which means both new life and salvation. New life: received in baptism, in which chrism is deployed; and salvation: healing and wholeness for all summed up in unction. “You have anointed my head with oil, and my cup is running over” (Ps. 23:5). All of which we will recall and make present once again in the passage from death to life that we celebrate at Easter.
Today, on the verge of that same celebration, the ordained clergy of the Church also renew their vows, recommitting themselves to the pastoral ministry God has called them to. Though bishop, priests, and deacons are called to be shepherds, we are also part of the flock, and that identity is primary. When the members of the Church say Psalm 95 at the morning office, “We are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand” (Ps. 95:7), clergy do not exempt themselves. We all depend on the grace of God. We all need to have faith and look to the one who is trustworthy and faithful to us: that is, Christ the good shepherd, whom God raised from the dead.
Psalm 95 is worth a closer look if we want to understand the ministries we’re called to. In the psalm, the next line that follows is, “Oh, that today you would hearken to his voice” (Ps. 95:7). As Christ’s flock, it’s essential that we be listening for the voice of the shepherd. That listening mode, that receptivity to the word that God addresses to us, is essential for the work we’re called to, as ordained ministers of the Church.
“Faith comes by what is heard” (Rom. 10:17), St. Paul writes in Romans; and for Paul, obedience, or responding to God’s command, first requires audience, or folk who are faithfully listening (Rom. 1:5). Last year, one of our parishioners pointed out to me that St. Paul’s statement about what is heard is in the present tense: in other words, we are bound to listen not at just one point in the past, but continually, in this present moment especially. Faith must be renewed in the here and now, in the “today” when we hearken to his voice.
Now is the time for faith to be taken up, and action undertaken. Now is the time of renewal and new life. Now is the turn of the year, in which the mystery of Christ’s dying and rising is made present now. Christ the good shepherd stands in our midst, calling each of us by name. May we, and all the flock of Christ, hear him and follow where he leads.